While the country is basking in Olympic glory, this week seemed like a good time for the Deputy Prime Minister to announce that his wish for Lords reform is dead. Unsurprisingly, he wanted to blame everyone but his own party.

Lazy clichés, as a general rule, are best avoided by political hacks and commentators. Yet the likening of the current coalition government to a marriage has been a constant theme for analysts of all creeds in the last two years, and it has never resonated quite as strongly as it did at the end of this parliamentary session.

The dust seems to have settled on the discussion about the House of Lords. For now. Politicians have spent a century discussing how to reform it, and we all still seem none the wiser. All we know is that it needs reform. But what exactly?

The Queen inspires more terror than George Osborne. That is the tempting conclusion to be drawn from comparing the Queen's Speech (volume of advanced leaks: low) with the Budget (volume of advanced leaks: high). After all, Osborne can tax you but the Queen has the Tower of London...

I think the reason is because we worry too much about the Lib Dems and we have left the reform proposals too long in their hands.

Even if people agree on what is wrong in the current arrangement, they never agree on a solution. But that is no argument for accepting, yet again, a status quo which combines a hereditary basis with one of patronage and which results in a chamber which is totally unrepresentative of the population for which it is legislating.

The House of Lords is an anachronism, albeit sometimes a very pleasant and extremely eccentric one, and should be reformed.

The Tories are being blackmailed by the Liberal Democrats to support Lords reform, a Conservative backbencher said today as she claimed as many as 110...

Vince Cable has denied the Liberal Democrats are “threatening” to block proposed boundary changes if Tory MPs torpedo plans to reform the House of...

Changes to constituency boundaries that will help the Conservatives secure a majority at the next election will be blocked by the Liberal Democrats if...

Nick Clegg has published the bill designed to introduce an elected House of Lords as Downing Street warned potential Tory rebels that they would be ma...

Parliament is braced for a lengthy pitched battle over reform of the House of Lords after Labour confirmed it will combine with Conservative rebels to...

Robin Cook once commented that reforming the House of Lords was like Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot - "(it) never arrives and some are rather doubtful whether it even exists".

The senior Labour peer Lord Lipsey, an economist and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on statistics, has calculated the proposals would cost...

Could deputy prime minister Nick Clegg take a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords once his time in government is up? Asked whether he would co...

Cracks in the coalition have been laid bare today as senior politicians clashed on the importance of reforming the House of Lords. Defence Secreta...

Nick Clegg has signalled his determination to press ahead with reform of the House of Lords in a move likely to anger Conservative MPs who have identi...

This week we learned that the parliamentary committee considering reform of the House of Lords voted 13-7 to support the government's plan for automatic places for Bishops to remain in a reformed chamber.

It is difficult to justify such a large body and in an era where there is clearly a desire for increasing democratic accountability and transparency, it is difficult to justify a revising Chamber that is wholly nominated and where no member is elected.

House of Lords reform should not be an issue we should be debating on a progressive left website. Indeed, the House of Lords reform should not be an issue for discussion at all. Reforming one entire third of the executive to be composed of democratically elected representatives is not a progressive idea.

Whenever I start a campaign I ask myself a simple question - what does this mean to the man in the pub? The sense that a cause must be made relevant to others is often somehow lost by the policy wonks of Westminster.

Nick Clegg set out his support for Scotland to have "greater discretion" and "freedom" for how they spent public money, during an evidence session in ...

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has reaffirmed his determination to press ahead with reform of the House of Lords over the coming year. In a wi...

On Saturday the 17th September, the Liberal Democrat conference passed a motion on the reform of the House of Lords. One of the amendments in particular is very relevant to increasing the numbers of women the UK Houses of Parliament.